How to find a value and how to sell a comic book collection?

[s10blazed]

Hey guys, first off - I read the forums rules and I am not advertising a sale here. I am just looking for information on their value and the best method to sell them for top dollar. I used to check value with Wizard:The Guide to Comics price guide. In the mid 90s their books were top notch. The price guide section was 2/3 of the book or more with still plenty of excellent sections with it. To my dismay recently, I bought a Wizard hoping to get more than a rough estimate of my collection. As I poked through it I wondered where in the hell the price guide was. Well I passed all 6 pages up when i was skimming through it!! I felt cheated... how in the world do they still call it a price guide?! I only found maybe a dozen or so of my books out of ~500. Pathetic price guide.... So what are my options to determine value of these books? Most of them are early/mid 90s Marvel, DC, Image, and Top Cow books.

Ok, so after I find their value and determine what I need to get out of them to part with them... whats the best place to sell them? People recommend eBay for everything now-a-days so I have that in mind. But I would like to try and off-load them all at once. I don't want to put them on eBay in groups and have only 1/4 of them sell. I know for a fact only the best ones would sell and I'd be stuck with all the left overs. I could mix and match them to best get rid of the bulk, but organizing auctions to include 1 or 2 good books and 10 mediocre ones would be time consuming. We'll call that plan b+. I do not know of any comic book stores within a 45 minute drive of me, so that limits my availabilty to get rid of them locally. The comic book shop I frequented before has shut down due to lack of other nerds in my area. Are there forums like this that allow classified ads? How about advertising fees?

Thank you


John P

[Ryan K]

To determine value, really your best bet is to do Complete Listings searches on ebay for stuff you have. Whatever people are willing to pay for it is what it's worth.

If you want something in print form you could always buy an issue of Comic Buyer's Guide. They have a decent price guide section. Or you could buy a Street and Smith's (or competitor's) price guide. They don't take into account price changes over the last few months since release though because it's released annually.

But IMO, bith those sources aren't nearly as good as ebay. For the most part you're not gonna get more than what someone's paying on ebay.

As for actually selling them, if you're unwilling to go ebay, I don't have much advice for you.

[sunsetdayglo]

I read your intro post on the other thread, and I think your in for a big surprise. It sounds to me like you bought your comics in the early-mid nineties when everyone thought their comics would be worth a lot later on.

The demand got really big because everyone thought they were gonna get rich, so many of those comics sold in the millions and many people put them right into bags and boards to keep them in mint condition. This compard to the past where kids bought comics and just ruined them or threw them away because no one ever guessed that they would some day be worth tons.

When everyone discovered that there were sooo many available prints of those comics (MANY kept in mint condition) that they couldn't make any money on them, a lot of those people just totally left comics. That's why today instead of a comic selling a million copies, like back then, the best selling comics now sell about 200,000.

So that means your trying to sell comics that hundreds of thousands of people still have in mint condition to a comic market where the best comic sells 200,000. And much of that newer, smaller market probably already bought those issues when they first came out. See the supply-demand problem?

I know you like mini trucks so think of it this way: if there were Twenty BILLION minitrucks in existence and only 10 people that wanted them, a mini truck owner probably couldn't make a lot if they sold their truck.

Best advice: wipe your ass with those comics and save on TP for the next six months. You'll probably save more than you would have made on them.

If you really want to put them to good use-save them for your kids/neices/nephews etc.

If you want to be a good person (maybe work on your karma, whatever) then take them to the children's or burn unit of your local hospital and donate them to someone who will really appreciate them, or to goodwill.
Great advice by (I think) Steven Grant.

[sunsetdayglo]

Sorry if I'm being harsh at all. It's just a hard lesson that a lot of us who stayed onboard through the crash in the market in the late nineties had to learn the hard way.

On the other board, when you asked about new comics to check out, I recommended a series called 100 Bullets. There's a scene in there between the two characters.

The first one has money and wants to invest it in art. The second one says that art isn't really for investment. She says you should buy art because you enjoy it.

It's really just a little comment on the rise and fall of comics in the 90's.

Good luck. Try ebay. Odds are, though that you won't get what you think you will and you definately won't get what they are, or at least where, worth to you.

[s10blazed]

Thanks for the honest advice. I know there isn't much of a market for them and this is precisely why I asked where I could possibly find one. I checked eBay - not much there. I checked my phone book - not much there. I checked the internet - so far not much here either. I don't expect to get rich off of these, more just hoping to better my future sooner. I bought them ALL because I enjoyed them. I have read everyone at least twice. At the time I had zero intention of it being an investment. I was just a nerd who liked comic books. Although I think wiping my butt with them is not a worthy fate, I will take the point you make to heart.

Where could I find some of these price guides you mention? I haven't seen anything like that at Wal-Mart and like I said, I don't have any local comic book stores any more. The local magazine store could probably order it for me if I have the name and publisher.

[sunsetdayglo]

Glad to hear you weren't just trying to make money by buying them.

Try the online comic shops to find one of the price guides. Most of the time the priceguides will list prices much higher than you'll be able to get for them, though.
Your best bet might be to get in contact with a big comic chain and offer to sell them all as a package.
If you're at all interested in getting back into comics, you may want to check if they'll trade. Usually you can get a lot more on trade than they'll buy them for.
Good luck!

[Corsair]

There's an online price guide at www.comicspriceguide.com. It's about as good as anything you'll find in print (and hey, it's free). The thing with price guides is that they are all essentially estimates, so I'll back up what everyone else has said. Use the guide to find if anything you have might be worth anything, then check eBay listings to see what they are actually selling for.

And, as long as I have the opportunity, here's some random Wizard bashing (lots of folks make a hobby of it, and I find some enjoyment in it myself...): Wizard has never, ever, ever had anything resembling a reliable or accurate price guide in it. Back 15 or so years ago when the magazine made its debut the majority of the guide consisted of inflated prices based on what was popular at the time, not based on supply and demand. Comics that hadn't been published yet would be listed with high values because they were expected to sell well, comics that had sold well were listed at high value even though there were still hundreds of thousands more readily available to anyone who wanted them, that sort of thing. The basic formula was, and probably still is, Wizard + price guide = sucking up to publishers to gain more advertising dollars.

In any case, good luck to you whatever you decide to do with your comics. I'm gladdened to see that you bought them to enjoy rather than as an investment.

[thik_3rd]

what do you got? i buy a lot of comics and have a decent idea of going prices for things.
in general ebay is a buyer's market so the prices won't be that high. really unless you have some silver age stuff or back, or a few key issues here and there, the majority of the stuff from like 1980 up sells for less than cover price.
i see in your reppin you live near the burgh? pittsburgh? try phantom of the attic or eide's if you want to sell them to a shop, but you'll get even less money.